Money fuels Newsom’s surge to recall finish line

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bid to fend off a recall in California has been bolstered by an infusion of tens of millions of dollars from big donors in recent months that delivered him an enormous financial advantage over his Republican rivals in the race’s final stretch.

There had been moments over the summer when Newsom, a Democrat, had appeared vulnerable in public polls, as California’s unique recall rules seemed to provide an opening to conservatives in one of the most reliably Democratic states in the nation. But Newsom raised more than $70 million this year into an account to battle the recall, much of it in July and August, allowing him and his allies to dominate the television airwaves and out-advertise his opponents online.

California has no limits on donations to recall committees, and Newsom has taken full advantage of those loose rules. His contributions have included an early $3 million from Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix; $500,000 from liberal philanthropist George Soros; and $500,000 from Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg. Priscilla Chan, a philanthropist and the wife of the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, contributed $750,000, and real estate magnate George Marcus gave $1 million.

Millions of dollars more have come from interest groups with business before the state, including labor unions representing service workers, teachers and prison guards, the real estate industry and Native American tribes that operate casinos.

On the Republican side, the financial cavalry never arrived.

This year, Democrats and Republicans in the state seem to agree on one thing ahead of the election Tuesday: The money mattered. All told, Newsom has spent more battling the recall than he did on his 2018 election.

“If Gavin didn’t raise the money, given the amount of apathy and angst, he could have lost,” said Kerman Maddox, a Democratic strategist in California who has also worked as a party fundraiser. “I’m just going to be real.”

Dave Gilliard, a Republican strategist involved in the recall efforts, said of the cash gulf: “It’s definitely made a difference.”

Despite the large sums involved in the recall, the race’s total cost is actually less than that of a single ballot measure last year, when Uber and Lyft teamed up to successfully press for rules allowing app-based companies to continue to classify drivers and other workers as independent contractors. That ballot measure drew roughly $225 million in spending because of the state’s many large and costly media markets, including Los Angeles.

Newsom used his financial edge to swamp his Republican rivals and proponents of the recall on television by a nearly 4-to-1 ratio in July and August, spending $20.4 million to the recall supporters’ $5.6 million, according to data provided by ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

Some of those ads framed the race in the starkest of terms, with one spot saying the recall’s outcome was “a matter of life and death” because of the coronavirus.

On YouTube and Google, the financial disparity was even more stark. Newsom has spent nearly $4.1 million, according to Google disclosure records, while his leading Republican opponent, radio talk show host Larry Elder, has spent a little more than $600,000.

The sudden emergence of Elder as the Republican front-runner — he entered the contest in July and had raised more than $13 million by the end of August — provided Newsom with a ready-made Republican foil.

An unabashed conservative, Elder had left a trail of radio clips in which he outlined positions unpopular with Democrats on issues such as the environment, abortion and the minimum wage.

“Lo and behold, he got a gift from the gods in the name of Larry Elder, the conservative African American version of Donald Trump,” Maddox said, adding that the specter of an Elder governorship had motivated big and small donors alike.

It had not always been clear that Newsom would have such a decisive cash advantage. Some party contributors were slow to engage. Ron Conway, a San Francisco-based venture capitalist who organized early anti-recall efforts and fundraising in the spring in the tech community, said he had been dismissed early on. “At the time, many people thought I was being alarmist,” he wrote in an email. “They don’t think that anymore!”

From the start, Newsom’s campaign framed the recall as a Republican power grab, which made it particularly unappealing for some bigger GOP contributors to inject themselves into the race, according to national and California Republicans.